The present invention relates generally to dart games and darts for use therewith and, more particularly, to a so-called "safety" dart of the type having a generally blunt non-metal tip adapted for use with a compatible "safety" dart board equipped with plural projecting dart-receiving fingers.
Dart games employing safety darts and game boards of the aforementioned type have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially for use by children, because the darts employed represent a substantially lesser risk of injury to participants and damage to walls, doors, furniture and other household articles which might be struck by an errantly thrown dart, as compared to more traditional dart games employing sharpened metal-tipped darts. Representative examples of such dart games and game components are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,894,736 by the same inventor as the present invention, and also may be found in the "STRIKER" brand of dart game produced and sold by Innoland, Inc., of Pineville, North Carolina, the assignee hereof.
While such dart games have met with a reasonable degree of commercial success and consumer acceptance, certain minor disadvantages still remain. Typically, the safety tip provided on darts employed in such safety dart games are formed of a generally rounded configuration from a relatively hard non-resilient plastic material and are mounted to the main body of the dart by a threaded connection. Although this form of safety tip represents a significant improvement over metal-tipped darts in terms of reducing the risk of injury and damage from the dart, the relatively hard plastic material from which the safety tip is fabricated nevertheless is capable of indenting the walls and doors of many typical homes and also may inflict painful bruises upon direct impact with a person's body. Additionally, the threaded mounting of the safety tip to the dart body has been found in practice to wear and deteriorate rapidly after repeated impact of the tip with the dart board, with the result that the worn tip may in turn tend to easily become dislodged from the dart body. Such safety darts also are commonly provided with a knurled or otherwise roughened metal collar, or so-called barrel, forming part of the dart body immediately adjacent the safety tip to provide the dart with an annular gripping surface which will frictionally engage the dart-receiving fingers of the dart board to retain the dart upon impact with the board. To insure this function, the plastic tip must be of a maximum transverse dimension which does not exceed the corresponding dimension of the barrel which is slightly greater than the spacing of the fingers of the dart board to provide a wedging action. Disadvantageously, however, this function of the barrel also tends to rapidly wear the fingers of the dart board and since the fingers are not entirely resilient, tends to laterally bend and deform the fingers over time, ultimately to the point that the fingers are rendered incapable of properly gripping and retaining the dart.